The official BBC weather Twitter account and the BBC Arabic account were
hijacked for almost three hours by supporters of Syria’s president Bashar
al-Assad.

The hackers, calling themselves the “Syrian Electronic Army”, posted a series of spoof weather reports attacking opponents of the Assad regime, including Israel, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, as well as Britain.

A BBC spokeswoman confirmed the account, @bbcweather, which has more than 57,000 followers, was an official account and had been hacked. She said staff were working to regain control as soon as possible.

At around 15.40 the account indicated the BBC had regained control, apologised for the disruption and said "normal service resumes".

The Corporation's social media editor Chris Hamilton also confirmed the hijacking.

The hackers claimed to be part of the “Syrian Electronic Army”, which operates its own Twitter account and website. Their first tweet from the @bbcweather account, posted at around 13.00 on Thursday afternoon, said: "Syrian Electronic Army Was Here via @Official_SEA #SEA #Syria".

Their website follows the Assad regime in labelling the Free Syrian Army and other opposition forces as "terrorists" and accuses Western and Arab media and NGOs of fabricating news about the ongoing civil war. It boasts about previous alleged hacking victims, including the French news agency AFP and Human Rights Watch.

The BBC is the latest high profile victim of Twitter account hijacking.

Burger King recently gained tens of thousands of followers when hackers took over its account by guessing the password and changed its avatar to the McDonald's logo and posted links to rap videos.

Such incidents have prompted calls for Twitter to introduce "two-factor" authentication to increase security. It would require members to enter a code texted to their phone as well as their Twitter password to log in.

"The good news is that the hack doesn't appear to have been done with the intention of spreading malicious links or scams. Instead, it appears that the Syrian Electronic Army are trying to spread political messages about Syria instead," said Graham Cluley of internet security firm Sophos.

"You should always use hard-to-guess, hard-to-crack, unique passwords for your online accounts that you are not using anywhere else on the web."